Cellular telephones are an integral part of society today. A substantial number of people throughout the world have and use cellular telephones. For many people, the cellular telephone is their primary means of communicating, and of receiving and sending information. Individuals use cellular telephones for personal business and also in the work environment to conduct business matters. Cellular telephones have become a convenient means to take pictures, record events and save and retain information. As technological advancements with regards to the cellular telephone occur, more features are available on the cellular telephone. People easily find new uses for the cellular telephone based on the new features. Many consumers pre-order the latest cellular telephone devices and often, there are long lines of consumer waiting to be the first to have the new devices with the latest technology.
Currently, with all of the new technical developments and the expanded uses for small mobile electronic devices, the cellular telephone industry is going through a major transition. Most of the original usage of cellular phones was voice usage. People used cellular phones to conduct verbal communication. A main type of cellular phone was the “feature” phone. These earlier phones did not have big screens and many of the current features and they were used primarily to make telephone calls. Today, there is the ‘smart’ phone. The current cellular phone devices have many more features than original cellular phones. As a result, people are finding more uses for these phones. Further, where the primary use of original cellular phones was voice, today people are using their cellular phone devices to transmit data (i.e. text and images). In fact, usage of cellular phones is becoming more to transmit data than voice. This shift in usage from voice to data is creating a challenging situation for the cellular phone network providers. The original design of cellular networks did not anticipate the increasing transmission of data. The increase in data traffic places a strain on the cellular network operations.
A conventional cellular network configuration 100 shown in FIG. 1 has antennas, radios and logic 102. The area 104 of each antenna (tower) device 102 is referred to the ‘Node’. The cellular telephone devices 106 communicate with and through the cellular network through the antennas in the specific Node areas. Each node area also has a server computing device 108. In the cellular network 100, these server devices 108 communicate with a Core Radio Node Controller (RNC) 110. One RNC 110 may have connected to it a hundred Nodes 104. The connection between the Node B and RNC can be through a microwave link 112. Next the RNC can further connect to the core network. The core network can also have several RNCs connected to it. Because these communication links 110 between the RNC and the nodes and even a core network are microwave links, there is a limited amount of bandwidth available to transmit information across these microwave links. These communication links have plenty of bandwidth to transmit voice communications. However, with the increased use of data-driven applications such as browsing the web, texting and watching videos via their cellular phones, the bandwidth on these microwave links is approaching the capacity of use.
The cellular telephone design and the cellular telephone protocols are designed to enable a cell phone user to roam through a cellular network. Referring to FIG. 2, a cellular network 200 is comprised of several little cells 202. A user can transparently move from one cell to another cell. The user is not disturbed as they move between cells. In some locations, such as metropolitan areas, a cellular phone user can be in one location and can switch cell sites every few seconds and not notice. The cellular network addresses all of the switching from one cell to another cell for the user.
When a user is on a wireless network, whether it is a cellular telephone data network or WIFI network, many times towers 102 and access points are not being utilized to their full potential. Due to this fact, tower wireless networks remain basically unintelligent. Current technologies allow users to seamlessly travel from one access point to another without noticing any interruptions in service activities. However, with regards to downloading large data files interruptions can occur when moving from one access point (antenna tower) to another access point.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,697,508 to Hernandez-Mondragon, et al. describes a system for communication between a mobile node and a communications network for use with a communications network having one or more communications network nodes. This invention defines a foreign agent and communicates with the mobile node in a predefined region. The system includes a ghost-foreign agent that advertises a foreign agent so that the mobile node is aware of the foreign agent when the mobile node is located outside the predefined region. The system further includes a ghost-mobile node that signals the foreign agent in response to the foreign agent advertising and based upon a predicted future state of the mobile node.
U.S. Patent Application Publication number 20100323715 describes technologies that are generally related to predicting future mobile device locations and using the predictive information to optimize mobile communications service parameters. Mobile device locations may be predicted using real-time device location information, destination information, and location history. Predicted location information for a given device, and possibly other devices as well, may be used to adjust mobile communications service parameters such as handoffs, channel assignment, multipath fading response parameters, data rates, transmission modes, opportunistic scheduling parameters, location-based services, and location update rates.
Although these technologies do enhance the communications of electronic devices, there remains a need for a more seamless communication system that can optimize large file transfers while moving through nodes on a wireless network.